Jon Stewart the next Walter Cronkite? (part 2)

So I did some substantial searching (well, not so much me, but Google did quite a bit of work), and found more articles on The Daily Show, but they weren’t very friendly.

This article, like many of the others I found, mentions a growing cynicism among the American youth caused directly from The Daily Show and other satirical celebrities (Howard Stern, Michael Moore, etc.). The blog also has numerous links; this makes it my favorite.

I find this an interesting phenomenon. These bloggers are suggesting that while The Daily Show/Colbert Report are educating their viewers on important political developments (as I talked about yesterday), the efficacy of these viewers is dropping. Any show with a strong support from youth can be very impactful; mostly because youth, by virtue of being young, don’t know anything. So a teenager who knows nothing about politics or current events other than the watered-down versions on Comedy Central is going to absorb all they hear from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert like it’s complete truth(iness). I’m not surprised in the slightest bit by these findings.

This article really drives home this depressing result of a funny show that happened to talk solely about politics. I think the author might be a little on the extreme side, but his evidence is pretty much irrefutable.

On a lighter note, Colbert gave this comment to graduates of Knox College (which is why it sounds vaguely like a sermon); “Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it,” he said. “Cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow. … ‘Yes’ is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say ‘yes.’ ”

And who says he needs writers? Come to think of it, he probably didn’t write that.

After all this writing I’ve done on the youth being influenced by satirical cable news shows, this last piece of information I will leave you with shows that the Internet is still the best source for the promotion of political awareness. I stole it from the first article. Do you ever get the feeling that some of your best work is done in vain?

Well I sure do.

The Colbert quote is from this awesome article.